


Our Family's Forte

by arimabat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, One Shot, POV Thor (Marvel), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reconciliation, Thor and Loki have a talk, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 13:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15341106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arimabat/pseuds/arimabat
Summary: “You’re right,” said Thor. “I am king. And I am responsible for my people.” His brows knitted into a tighter frown as he regarded his brother, jaw set. “Can I trust you to help me?”Loki’s gaze skirted his brother’s, flitting around for a moment or two before finding their way back. “You really shouldn’t.”After Asgard explodes and Loki shows up on the Statesman, he and Thor have a talk.





	Our Family's Forte

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in that magical space between the end of Thor Ragnarok and the post credit scene. A kinder time.

It was shortly after the closest thing Thor would get to a coronation. Walking through the scattered remains of what was left of his people to take his throne… He remembered how much he had cared - what felt like a lifetime ago - about the pomp and ceremony that should accompany the occasion. Now, none of that.

Back in his chamber, he shifted in his seat, his bones aching yet bothering him less than having to adjust to suddenly having only half his vision. Sore fingers running over the metal goblet, he closed his eye as his weary mind once again turned to the scale of the task that now faced him. And barely suppressed, the dull pain of what had been lost. Like a mountain just out of sight, to truly confront it would be to be forced to acknowledge its enormity. Better then, to focus on what he had to do.

There was a knock on the door. Thor tensed. Who would it be? Would they want something? Need something? Would it be something he couldn’t provide? Couldn’t he have a little rest? Just a night. Just one night.

What kind of king hid from his people?

“Come in,” he said and lifted himself out of the chair with a slight wince to turn and face the knocker.

A figure slipped through a barely opened door and Thor received his second unexpected visit from his brother. He looked tired, but not in a particularly bad shape. Though with Loki, appearances only ever said so much. Yet there was something about him, something that had been nagging at Thor ever since he had unmasked the fake-Odin in Asgard. He was… softer. Was that right? He tried to remember how he had been on Svartalfheim. All edges, with only creeping hints of the brother he had once known. This Loki was a changed creature, not the one of their childhood but far removed from that raging monster of Midgard. Still so very much alive. _I’m here_ , he had said. Had he truly meant it?

They had both changed in the intervening years, of course. Now they were familiar strangers. In the mess of events they had just crashed through, there had never been a chance to be reacquainted. Not really. And now?

“My king,” said Loki, breaking that odd stretch of silence while Thor’s thoughts ran wild with him. A smile played across his younger brother’s face. It wasn’t mocking, despite the hint of irony in his words.

Thor shook his head in faint reproach, yet smiled too. “Got there in the end,” he said.

He expected Loki to make a biting remark about his own time on the throne, yet once again his visitor defied expectations. “I wish it were under better circumstances,” he said, leaning against the door frame.

The shadow of his first coronation hung between them. Uneasy. And with it everything that came after. Thor had believed for a long time that he would never have to decide whether to forgive Loki. After all, his brother had been dead. He could mourn him, could expect his Midgardian friends to respect that loss. In a terrible way, Loki being dead had been a lot easier. A lot more convenient. But of course, things were never simple with him.

“Do you need my help with anything?”

Loki shook his head. “Not as such. But we should probably talk.”

“I thought you said our family didn’t do that sort of thing.”

“I said that it isn’t our forte. Which, you have to admit, is clearly true,” he said with that half-smile Thor remembered so well.

“Talking was never the problem.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“We had enough words for each other. They just lacked honesty.”

Loki’s eyebrows flew up. “Hmm. Family secrets are rather painful, aren’t they?”

The words - echoing their encounter on Sakaar - stung, yet they weren’t said with any particular bitterness. It struck Thor that they had never actually discussed the truth of Loki’s heritage. They had never had the chance. No - that wasn’t true. Thor had just never chosen to do so. Why rake over ancient history with a brother he had convinced himself he had given up on?

“Odin was wrong to lie to you,” he said. He had never said it before, but… “That doesn’t excuse everything you’ve done since finding out the truth.”

“I know.”

Thor’s fists clenched a little tighter. “Jotunheim, Midgard, now Asgard… So many lives lost. You’ve left a trail of destruction behind you.”

Loki made a humming sound. “Couldn’t blame you if you decided to jettison me, really.”

Thor blinked. “I wouldn’t -“

“I know. Even though you probably should.” Loki’s smile widened at Thor’s surprise, a mocking note returning to his expression. “You’re a king now. That responsibility comes with some difficult choices.”

“What was the hardest choice you had to make, how tall your statue was to be?”

“You’d be surprised.”

That odd silence returned. It was so difficult to judge this new Loki, so hard to know how he thought and what he would do. Of course, he had never been easy to read. And yet… Maybe Loki felt the same way. He had looked at him with such a strange expression back on Sakaar in the lift. When Thor had suggested that they part ways. That would be the logical thing to do, wouldn’t it? He had thought that that was what Loki had wanted. The same way Thor had repeatedly tried to get away from his brother. Yet whenever they tried to part for good, it didn’t last. Wherever they turned, they seemed to run into each other again.

“You’re right,” said Thor. “I am king. And I am responsible for my people.” His brows knitted into a tighter frown as he regarded his brother, jaw set. “Can I trust you to help me?”

Loki’s gaze skirted his brother’s, flitting around for a moment or two before finding their way back. “You really shouldn’t.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“What do you expect of me, Thor? To grovel, to beg for forgiveness for past indiscretions? What good would that do?”

“I didn’t ask for that. All I want to know is whether I can trust you.”

“I thought you had finally grown up enough to know that you could not.”

Thor remembered Sakaar, his little speech to a writhing Loki. How he had tricked the trickster with that little electronic device. That shiver of pride for finally - _finally_ \- not having fallen for it. “If you would stop trying to betray me -“

“That isn’t in my nature.”

“Then what exactly _is_ in your nature?”

Loki frowned. He looked almost… nervous. Unsure. So unlike that fury in the Observatory, the cruelty on Stark Tower, the bitterness on Svartalfheim.

How exactly had he spent those years on the throne? Surely _somebody_ had to have figured out the truth. The man had built a statue of himself and put on tragedies about his life, for Bor’s sake. Yet the people Thor had seen hadn’t looked particularly unhappy, like they were being oppressed. On the contrary, Loki’s Asgard had looked like a rather cheery place. None of it made sense.

“I don’t know,” said Loki eventually. “Not this.” He gestured around vaguely. Thor wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. What did Loki think his role on the Statesman was to be?

He was always meant to be beside Thor. To rule with him, his earliest and most trusted advisor. Trust… There was that word again. Loki didn’t make it easy to trust him. And he had made it abundantly clear that even he didn’t think Thor should do so.

“If I asked you how you escaped Asgard, would you tell me?” asked Thor, all of a sudden.

“Probably not.”

The reply came quickly and made Thor sigh. “Never a straight answer with you, is there.”

“Yet you still wish you could trust me.”

“I need you,” said Thor without emotion. “And our people need you. It’s time you decided whether that’s worth fighting for.”

“I came back, didn’t I?”

“And will you stay?” Thor regarded his brother with narrowed eyes. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Will I be able to rely on you if things get tough? Or will you take the easy way out?”

Loki bristled visibly at that. “The last few years have been many things, but they have hardly been _easy_.”

“Perhaps not. But you still managed to look out for yourself. That’s all you did.”

A familiar glint of anger. “You can’t ignore all the things I’ve done. And you shouldn’t. Yet you still ask whether you can _trust_ me - it’s absurd, Thor, it’s the height of childish naivety and it proves that however much you think -“

“Spare me, Loki,” said Thor, cutting off the unfolding monologue with a weary gesture.

Loki snorted. “Shut me up all you like, it doesn’t make my words any less true.”

“We’ve lost our home. Our parents. Everything.”

“Doesn’t erase the past.”

“No, it doesn’t. But this isn’t about us,” said Thor, the anger rising unbidden in him. “This is about everyone else on this ship.”

“You can hardly appeal to my altruism after telling me that I only ever look out for myself.”

“So maybe you care about other people. I hope you do. How would I know? It’s been a long time since I’ve been privy to your thoughts.” He was steadily losing the battle against his old rage. So much for his brother no longer being able to get to him.

“Not all of us are foolish enough to wear our hearts on our sleeves and our minds in our boots,” said Loki before his face twisted into a mean smile. “But not any more, apparently. You’ve grown smarter, Thor. Though not kinder.”

Thor took a half-step forward, his temper close to boiling. “Is that what counts as a compliment from you?” he spat. “Should I be flattered?”

“I shouldn’t have come -“

“Why?” said Thor in a biting tone. “You clearly have so many words of wisdom to offer!”

There was a moment’s pause as they both stared at each other. Thor’s face cracked first as his throat contracted in chuckles he couldn’t quite suppress. Loki snorted again and looked away. Something had broken between them, and with it some of the tension drained away too. For the first time in too long, Thor felt like he had a sense of what was going on in his brother’s head. Because they both didn’t quite know where to go from here. Nothing like bonding over a shared cluelessness.

They both needed a little time to regain their composure. The echoes of so many similar moments in their childhood hung all around them. A past that was lost to them forever. But that was the point, wasn’t it? They couldn’t go back. And all they really had going forwards was each other.

“You should be aware that I would never knowingly compliment you,” said Loki at last. “But I did mean what I said earlier. I am here.”

“I suppose I’ll just have to trust you on that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this isn't a particularly original concept and I'm sure it's been done a million times before but I was feeling it and it was a decent distraction so... might as well post it, right?


End file.
